On Tuesday, IBM said that it is going to invest $3 billion over a period of four years to build a new Internet of Things unit.

The move has formalized IBM's existing Internet of Things efforts, as IBM's smarter-planet and smarter-cities businesses are linked to the Internet of Things trend.

The Internet of Things is based on a rough idea that the sensors will be embedded in everything and will be networked to create data. This flow of data could be helpful in the improvement of the operations.

The Internet of Things unit formation follows a familiar playbook in the case of IBM. It targets a high-value growth area, invests at least a $1 billion to get the effort rolling and throws its hardware, software and consultants at the issue.

In this respect, the formation of the Internet of Things unit will rhyme with what IBM did with e-commerce, analytics, and cloud and cognitive computing.

IBM has faced a fierce battle for enterprise Internet of Things (IoT) business. Cisco has targeted IoT, as it has almost every tech vendor.

Meanwhile, IBM's nontraditional rivals have strong IoT efforts. For example, General Electric, which makes a lot of the things that will be networked, has Predix named IoT platform.

Although according to GE the Internet of Things the industrial Internet, the concept of networking things and layering analytics on top is the same, yet it has invested $1 billion in industrial software development.

In the case of IBM, the company said that it will have over 2,000 consultants, researchers and developers aimed at IoT and the analytics that go with it.

IBM said that the unit will have a cloud platform for industries aimed at verticals, and it will offer dynamic pricing models and cloud delivery to different verticals.

The unit will also have Bluemix IoT platform as a service, so that the developers can create and deploy applications for asset tracking, facilities management and engineering tools.

Furthermore, it will have an ecosystem of partners ranging from AT&T, ARM to The Weather Company.